President Joe Biden has echoed House Speaker Kevin McCarthy‘s assessment of their first face-to-face meeting in their new positions to discuss raising the country’s $31.4 trillion debt ceiling.
During an address to the National Prayer Breakfast, Biden repeated McCarthy’s description of their sit-down at the White House this week as “good,” as the president encouraged lawmakers to remain civil before what is anticipated to become tense and protracted negotiations over the Treasury Department‘s credit card limit in order to avoid defaulting on its loans.
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“Let’s start treating each other with respect. That’s what Kevin and I are going to do. Not a joke, we had a good meeting yesterday,” Biden said on Capitol Hill Thursday. “It doesn’t mean we’ve got to agree. Fight like hell. But let’s treat each other with respect.”
Despite both parties reiterating their opening positions, McCarthy told reporters he and Biden had agreed “to continue the conversation” after sharing “a lot of ideas” during their first 90-minute session. The speaker added there is “an opportunity here to come to an agreement on both sides … long before the deadline,” which is estimated to be in June, but would not commit to a “clean” debt ceiling bill or announce potential spending cuts.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was slightly edgier during her briefing Wednesday, conveying sympathy to McCarthy as he contends with a conference with wide-ranging opinions on how to respond to the issue.
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“We understand what the speaker is going through,” she said. “He has a caucus that has put forward some pretty extreme ideas, some extreme options, in front of the American people — cutting Medicare, cutting Social Security. That is what he’s dealing with.”
